The State - News from April 2, 1986

The office of the state architect was severely criticized in an assembly subcommittee hearing for its management of a program to remove dangerous PCBs from state-owned facilities. Since 1981, the Legislature has appropriated more than $6 million for the office to develop a PCB program to identify, dispose and replace leaking transformers and to install spill-prevention measures for less dangerous transformers. Gerald Beavers, an analyst for the legislative analyst’s office told the ways and means subcommittee on state administration that the state architect’s office’s performance has been “dismal. . . . given the amount of dollars appropriated and reappropriated during the past five years not much has been done.” The office says it has moved as quickly as regulations allow. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are highly toxic fluids that were used as insulators in electrical transformers. The Environmental Protection Agency banned their production and distribution in 1979.